In general, there are two types of bandwidth management. One is server based and the other is router based (also known as distributed) bandwidth management. Server based bandwidth management allows for easy implementation of quality of service and policy rules but suffers from lack of knowledge of the network. Router based bandwidth management provides for knowledge of the network but is slow and inefficient in call processing, namely call setup. Even though router based bandwidth management is suboptimal, since it provides for knowledge of the network, an implementation called Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP) has been standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).
While there are existing bandwidth management types, the current types are inefficient and are relatively unsatisfactory. Accordingly, there exists a need for a better method and apparatus for bandwidth management.
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